Laurie Spiegel | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1945-09-20)September 20, 1945 (age 80) |
| Genres | Electronic,algorithmic composition,computer music |
| Occupation | Composer |
| Instruments | Synthesizer,Music Mouse, guitar, lute |
| Years active | 1973–present |
| Website | retiary.org/ls/ |
Laurie Spiegel (born September 20, 1945)[1] is an American composer. She has worked atBell Laboratories, incomputer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic musiccompositions and heralgorithmic composition softwareMusic Mouse. She is also a guitarist and lutenist.[2]
Spiegel's musical interpretation ofJohannes Kepler'sHarmonices Mundi appeared on "Sounds of Earth" section of theVoyager Golden Record.[3] Her 1972 piece "Sediment" was included in the 2012 filmThe Hunger Games.[4]
She has been inducted into theNational Women's Hall of Fame.[5]
Spiegel's early musical experiences were largely self-directed, beginning with themandolin, guitar, andbanjo she had as a child, which she learned to play by ear.[6] She became interested by electronics after using a tape-operated computer atPurdue University as part of a high school class field trip.[7] At the age of 20, she taught herself Western music notation, after which she began writing down her compositions.[8]
Spiegel attendedShimer College inNaperville, Illinois, through the school's early entrance program.[9] She subsequently spent a year at theUniversity of Oxford through an exchange program at Shimer.[10][11] After receiving her bachelor's degree insociology from Shimer in 1967,[12] she stayed in Oxford for an additional year,[10] commuting to London to study guitar, music theory, and composition withJohn W. Duarte.[12]
After moving to Manhattan, where she briefly worked in social sciences research and documentary film, she studied composition underJacob Druckman,Vincent Persichetti, andHall Overton at theJuilliard School from 1969 to 1972 and privately withEmmanuel Ghent. Spiegel felt like an outsider at the Juilliard School, perceiving her interests in the emotional and structural aspects of music to be at odds with "the post-Webernite, serialist, atonal, blip and bleep school of music" which dominated conservatory pedagogy at the time.[7] However, she forged many meaningful connections outside of the conservatory by working in shared studio spaces around New York, such as theColumbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (now theComputer Music Center) to which her composition teacher had granted her access.[7]
She subsequently became Druckman's assistant and followed him toBrooklyn College, completing her master's degree in composition there in 1975 and pursuing research in early American music under the direction ofH. Wiley Hitchcock.[1]
Best known for her use ofalgorithmic composition techniques, Spiegel worked withBuchla andElectronic Music Laboratories synthesizers and digital systems includingBell Labs' GROOVE system (1973–1978), theBell Labs Digital Synthesizer (1977), the alphaSyntauri synthesizer system for theApple II computer (1978–1981), and the McLeyvier (1981–1985).[13][3][clarification needed] In various pieces, Spiegel has used musical algorithms to simulate natural phenomena, emulatetonal harmony rules of earlier musical eras, and sonically represent large data sets.[14] In her pieceViroid, for example, she used thegenetic code of a simple organism to determine the pitches produced by asynthesizer.[14] In her 1977 pieceImprovisation on a Concerto Generator, she used an algorithm designed to replicateBach's "chorale-style harmonic progressions."[15] Spiegel views algorithmic music as a natural extension to the rule-based systems of traditional Western music, such ascounterpoint andvoice-leading, and her ultimate goal in using such techniques is to automate logical musical tasks so that she can "focus more completely on the aspects of music that I cannot reduce to logic."[14]
Many of Spiegel's non-algorithmic compositions also use algorithm-like rules, and the artist has claimed that defining these rules in computer code was simply a natural next step for her own musical self expression.
Spiegel's best known and most widely used software wasMusic Mouse (1986), a self-described "intelligent instrument" forMacintosh,Amiga, andAtari computers.[16][17][18][19] In addition to improvisations using this software, Spiegel composed several works using Music Mouse including "Cavis muris" in 1986, "Three Sonic Spaces" in 1989, and "Sound Zones" in 1990.[3] She continued to update the program through MacintoshOS 9, and as of 2012,[needs update] it remained available for purchase or demo download from her Web site.[17]
In addition to electronics and computer-based music, Spiegel has composed works for piano, guitar and other solo instruments and small orchestra, as well as drawings, photography, video art, numerous writings and computer software.[16] In the visual domain, Spiegel wrote one of the first drawing or painting programs at Bell Labs, which she expanded to include interactive video and synchronous audio output in the mid-1970s.[20]
Spiegel was a video artist in residence at the Experimental Television Lab at WNET Thirteen in New York (1976).[21] She composed series music for the TV Lab's weekly "VTR—Video and Television Review" and audio special effects for its 2-hour science fiction filmThe Lathe of Heaven, both under the direction ofDavid Loxton.[22]
In addition to computer software development, starting in the early 1970s, Spiegel supported herself by both teaching and by soundtrack composition, having had steady work throughout the 1970s at Spectra Films, Valkhn Films, the Experimental TV Lab at WNET (PBS), and subsequently for various individual video artists, animators, and filmmakers. As a self-proclaimed lover of emotional music, Spiegel thoroughly enjoyed her brief work as a soundtrack composer : "When you do soundtracks," she claims, "all that really matters is emotional content."[7]
In the 1980s, she focused on developing music software and consulting in the music technology field, as well as teaching atCooper Union andNew York University.[16] For her work she received aFoundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2018).[23]
In 2018 Spiegel's earlyMusic for New Electronic Media was part of the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 Exhibition, curated by Jon Cates.[24]
In 2023, she was awarded the Giga-Hertz Main Award for Electronic Music by theCenter for Art and Media Karlsruhe for her life's work.[25] In 2018, she began the process of digitally archiving her entire body of work.[26]
Philip Sherburne ofPitchfork said: "With aprogrammer’s eye for detail, Spiegel renders both extendeddrones andfolk-inspiredcounterpoints in the simplest of terms."[27]
Spiegel's writings on the importance of musical pattern manipulation on computer music interface design[28] has influenced the design oflive coding music software environments such asTidalcycles.[29]
Spiegel is an outspokenanimal rights activist, and she has sought throughout her career to raise awareness for "underprivileged and disparaged" animals within urban landscapes, such as mice, rats, and pigeons.[30] She first learned to care for pigeons as part of a college psychology course, and she began rehabilitating injured birds inTribeca after theSeptember 11 attacks.[31] In 2004, Spiegel started a personal effort to regularly feed local pigeons so that they could have "species appropriate" meals, and as of 2024, she continues to feed pigeons almost daily in Manhattan'sDuane Park.[31]
As part of her effort to raise awareness for animal rights, Spiegel has composed several works related tourban wildlife. The most notable of these works is a 2006audio-visual installation titledFerals which featured over 3,000 original photographs ofNew York City pigeons.[30] This visual display was accompanied by a collage of pigeon sounds which attempted to sonically relate the story of "two hungry juvenile pigeons begging their parents for food."[30] Other works focused on animal rights includeAnon a Mouse (2003), a short recorded "opera" featuring a human, a dog, and a mouse, andCavis Muris (1986), which attempted to sonically depict the mice which occupied her warehouse at the time.[30]
Spiegel is also dedicated to the democratization and accessibility of music, and she has described her achievements towards this end as "one of the greatest gratifications of my own work."[32] She believes that the tools ofcomputer music, such as her ownMusic Mouse software, can lower the monetary and temporalbarriers to entry that has been historically associated with music production.[32] These sorts of tools, she believes, have already increased the representation of groups which have been historically underrepresented in the industry, such aswomen composers.[7]
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